Eating Your Divorce Frog

Eating your divorce frog? Gulp! Have you done it yet?

Perhaps you haven’t hear the term, ‘eat your frog’. Mark Twain  famously said that if you eat a live frog every day for breakfast, nothing worse could happen to you for the rest of the day! Since then, the phrase has been popularised by Brain Tracy who talks about ‘Eating your Frog’ each day to avoid procrastination. Basically, if you do the worst task first, it gets it over with so you can move onto more enjoyable things.

Everybody’s frog is different. Everybody’s frog can change over time. At this time of year, my frog is getting my accounts ready to submit to my accountant! Argh I hate it with a passion. So, this weekend, I ate my Frog!

Accounts and Tax Return in the bag and it feels awesome! It took the best part of two days to get it all done because I’m not as organised as I could be. But it feels great that it’s out of the way and although there’s the small matter of a tax bill, knowing that its complete is fabulous. It won’t be me panicking on 30th January!

What’s your divorce frog or are you still being an ostrich?

If you’re being an ostrich, you probably don’t even know that you’ve got a frog or two! If you’re being an ostrich and your head is well and truly in the sand, you probably hope that somehow, everything is going to resolve itself. You hope that you’ll wake up one day, it’ll all be resolved; you will have a financial settlement you are happy with, arrangements for the children are working just fine and you are beginning to feel like the ‘old’ you again.

I hate to burst your bubble but that ain’t gonna happen

Really? Like you think that that’s possible? I hate to burst your bubble but that ain’t gonna happen. No. Not. Never. Just no. So. You have a choice here, carry on being an ostrich and let the divorce train ride over you or, you can jump on and have some say in which stations you stop at.

You gotta meet your frog before you can eat him!

For some ladies, the frog is the finances. Perhaps this is your biggie too. Particularly if you’ve already taken some legal advice and your lawyer started talking about ‘Financial Disclosure’ ‘Form E’ ‘CETV’  or ‘Offsetting’. It probably made your blood run cold. For other ladies, dealing with the figures is the easy bit. It’s making arrangements for the children that are the biggest worry. Whichever it is for you, and it could be both, the first thing that will help you is just be open and honest about the frogs that you have.

Be playful with yourself about this if it help you. Give them names (it’ll be our secret) 😉 just get to know them and make friends with them. It makes eating them a whole lot easier I promise.  If you’ve already got a copy of The Smart Woman’s Divorce Guide you can find a list at the back of all the things that you need to think about. You need to get to understand what your financial situation is before you start to negotiate. Bank accounts, savings, investments, pension, debts, loans, PCP, HP, credit cards, you need to know where you are with each of these and it can be scary. What’s even more scary is negotiating with a husband who knows more about this stuff than you do. So learn. Seriously, its not as complicated as you perhaps imagine. I can say that as the girl who took her G.C.S.E in maths 5 times (please keep my secret)! Numbers just aren’t my bag, but this stuff isn’t about the adding up and taking away, it’s just finding the numbers! If your honest with yourself, perhaps you don’t want to know the numbers, but you need to, so do it. Not knowing your numbers will cost you dearly. Financially, and probably emotionally too.

say hello you your frogs!

• So the first thing you can do is make a list of all the things that you need to think about, make decisions on and find the answers to. Just a list. Then leave it a while.
• Next, go to the list and do the things that you can do simply and quickly. Those things that you just think meh?
• What you are left with, are your frogs. Say hello to your frogs!
• The next step is to take just 1 frog and eat it! It could be getting your credit card statements out. It might be making a phone call you don’t want to make. Everyone has a different frog.  When you’ve eaten that frog, congratulate yourself. How does it feel now you’ve done it? Was it really as bad as you thought?
• Work through 1 frog each day until you’ve eaten the lot!

Once you’ve eaten your divorce frogs, you’ll feel so much calmer and in control. Divorce won’t feel as scary and you’ll feel part of the process rather than feeling like it’s something that is happening to you. Being prepared is the best gift that you can give yourself during your divorce. You need to be prepared emotionally and practically.  You’ll notice that what you learn about your frogs (whatever they are) will stay with you and stand you in good stead for your life as a newly divorced lady.

I’m Emma Heptonstall and I’m a Divorce Coach for Ladies who Leave. I believe that divorce doesn’t have to be difficult. I support ladies like you to get clear about where they are right now, and how to move forward so that they move through their divorce with ease, coming out the other side as the smart confident women that they are.